Monday, January 31, 2011

UK Launches National Crime Map

Police.ukA new national crime map has been released by the government in the UK. UK citizens, in England and Wales, can now search this Google Maps application to find what crimes have been committed in their neighbourhoods.

Previously UK police forces have been very reluctant to release the location of crimes beyond local ward level. The new map shows crime mapped to "an anonymous point on or near the road where they occurred." Individual addresses are not pinpointed on the map.

To search for crime in an area users can enter a postcode or an address. The map will then display the crimes committed in a radius of the submitted location. The maps include a pretty neat marker clustering system and the number of crimes are also broken down by category.